In Search of the Missing

by Mick McCarthy

  Our search in Dunmanway that night – in both the town and on roads where there had been possible sightings – yielded nothing. There were no clues. The reported sightings did not stand up. We called it a day, headed for our van, and drove back to Cork. The following day, we resumed the search at 10 a.m. As we were walking out to the farm where the young man was possibly last seen, a Mercedes pulled up beside us with three people inside. One of the Civil Defence guys introduced the car passengers to us as the father, the brother and the sister of the missing man. We spoke together for a few minutes, and our hearts went out to them. Often, once the family of the missing person sees the dogs out searching, they automatically think the dogs will be successful in locating their loved one. We don’t ever dishearten them as we always search under the assumption that we are looking for a live person, knowing that the missing person may be lost, injured or suffering from hypothermia. Afterwards, one of the gardaí told me that the young man’s father had thought we were being paid to carry out the search; when he discovered otherwise, he said to the garda he would pay us whatever we wanted. The garda said, ‘I’d say he’d sell his house.’ Needless to say, we do not accept payment as our services are voluntary.

  We continued on to the farm, searched around the farmyard, and combed the outbuildings. Then we moved out into the fields and trawled our way through heavy bogland until we came to a river. Three feet deep and flowing fast, it looked highly dangerous, but I thought it could be crossed. More than likely, the young man had waded through it on his way to the farmyard, and crossed it again when he ran down through the fields. But the guide disagreed: he was convinced he would never have made it safely across.

  The river flowed through a hollow, and the land around it rose up gradually from the dip to a point where the lights of a few scattered bungalows could be seen. A missing person is always likely to stay near lights: they give a sense of security and direction, and they offer hope, a place of safety. We were heading towards the bungalows when Lucy picked up some scent. She tracked all the way back to the river, and dragged me along with force. Lucy had never been wrong before, and if Áine had been handling her she would have taken charge of the situation and insisted on working the other side of the river. I felt certain that the missing man had paddled through the river on his way to the farm, and had returned the same way when the farmer had become annoyed with him, but our guide was adamant that there was no way the young man would have returned across the river. Generally, I take heed of the local guides as usually they know best. Looking back, I realise I should have insisted, and I regret deeply not following my own instincts and, more importantly, not trusting Lucy.

  The land from the farm to the river was marshland, and had no clear pathway. Even if the young man had gone back to the river, it would not have been possible for him to stay on exactly the same trail he had walked along on his way to the farmyard. Lucy was adamant in her indication. The gardaí then decided we should move away and search along a road where there had been another sighting. They have total control over a search and are the legal authority, so I had to follow their instructions. We walked on for a mile down that road, even though we knew that Lucy was likely to pick up any scent within only a hundred yards of the starting point. She found no scent there.

  We climbed up Coole Mountain to the site of the rave party. It consisted of a huge, derelict barn with a galvanised roof, a caravan and a makeshift shack. Lucy picked up a definite scent there. We went back down to the roadway. At a fork on the road, we came to a Y-junction and took a right turn. When Lucy found no scent, she doubled back to the junction and searched the road on the left. She seemed to pick up a scent then. We tracked along that road for miles. The gardaí and members of the Civil Defence followed behind us in cars, and there was also a group of volunteers on foot. It was almost midnight when we came to the entrance to a riding school. We were now only two fields away from the river in a straight line. At that point, Lucy appeared to lose the scent.

  As Glen and I had to go to work the next morning, we told the gardaí that we would return the following evening if required. When they told us that they were expecting over three hundred people from Tipperary the next day to search, we knew it would be pointless trying to work the dogs with so many people around.

  Lucy was lame for two weeks afterwards. She had worked herself so hard in Dunmanway – pulling and tugging me enthusiastically for miles on end – that she had driven her nails back into her feet and was covered in blood. I’ve never seen any dog work with such concentration and drive.

  On the Sunday, exactly one week after the young man had disappeared, searchers found his body just before midday. It was located in woodland at Farranheeny, near the bungalows overlooking the river. The location was less than a mile from where Lucy had indicated, and where a halt to the search had been called for the night. The young Tipperary man had died of hypothermia.

  Bandon River Call-out

  The shout came from a garda inspector to search for a woman from east Cork. The woman’s car had been abandoned near the Bandon river, and the gardaí wanted us to check whether or not she had actually entered the water. On their way to the scene, Áine and Glen stopped off for a briefing at the hall in Innishannon, then headed for Bandon with Lucy. They were joined by Paddy Harkin from Caheragh in west Cork, who owned a young, air-scenting German shepherd named Tara. Midleton Red Cross people were already there; one of their members was related to the missing woman.

  Using Lucy, the gardaí wanted to check the woman’s direction of travel from her car. Lucy would normally be asked to take scent from the driver’s seat, but before doing so, Áine asked the gardaí if anyone had been into the car for any reason. Unfortunately, because of inexperience with search dogs, car seats and other articles belonging to the missing person are usually contaminated by the investigating officers. In this case, Áine was informed that the car had been searched for the woman’s mobile phone; regrettably, this compromised the woman’s scent. At Áine’s request, a relative of the missing woman brought some articles, including a shoe, from the woman’s home. A shoe is one of the most likely items not to be contaminated as the inside usually stays untouched by anyone other than the wearer. Lucy took scent from the shoe and quickly tracked from the car to the river bank. Along the way, she stopped at a bush, which suggested that the missing woman may have stopped there for a while. In similar tragedies, I’ve found that women usually tend to delay their planned actions more than men do. Then, Lucy continued to track on along by the river bank for another few yards. She stopped at the water’s edge and gave tongue, indicating to Áine that the woman’s final walk ended there. The gardaí now had the information they needed to continue the search. When the inspector arrived, they told him that they were satisfied with Lucy’s indication.

  The river search was about to begin. Áine and Glen were loading up, preparing to head for home with Lucy, when a concerned relative of the missing woman approached Áine and asked, ‘Did she go into the river?’ Áine tried to avoid engaging the man in conversation so as to stop herself from becoming emotional. She told him she had spoken to the inspector and he should talk to him. But the relative guessed the answer because he then asked, ‘Did she walk far before she went in?’

  Later, the body of the missing woman was found in the river. Áine cringed when she was told, and her thoughts were with the missing woman’s children. How would they cope without her?

  The inspector seemed pleased with the speed of the operation, and the fact that the search was carried out in a low-key manner. The gardaí saw how our dogs worked; they appreciated their value and understood the necessity of calling them in at the earliest stage of a search.

  Some weeks later, the Bandon gardaí held a very successful fund-raiser in a local church in support of local charities, including Irish Search Dogs; our members present on the night were introduced to the dignitaries and performers. Those in attendance included the chief superintendent we had met several
years previously during the search for the victims of the triple murder in Cork.

  For the previous eighteen months, Áine and I, with the help of our club members, had been training up one of our other female bloodhounds. Karla was making great progress and was proving to be an excellent trailing dog. All her training was geared around real-life scenarios. As Karla’s primary trainer, Áine decided to offer her to Paddy Harkin. Karla was presented to Paddy in the presence of the local gardaí, who welcomed the additional help in their search for missing persons. Karla continued to be owned by Áine but would be handled by Paddy until one or both retired, after which she would revert to Áine’s ownership to live out her life. She is proving to be worth her weight in gold, and is on call in the west Cork area. It is one more step towards pulling all resources together to get to the ultimate goal, which is, of course, finding the missing person.

  Puppy Love

  Áine and I started Badgershill Kennels to promote the bloodhound as an excellent working show dog. When we decided to put Lucy in pup, we imported semen from an American show champion called Sherick’s Flash Fwd at Andorra Kennels; his pet name was Wyley. Lucy gave birth to two pups, one male and one female, making our kennels the first in the Republic of Ireland to breed and work bloodhounds. We kept the female – Cáilín Álainn at Andorra, known as Belle – and gave Watson, the male, to Tom Mulcahy in Midleton, who was a member of Irish Search Dogs. Watson was a large, beautiful, lithe, agile dog, with an excellent temperament and a huge hunger for work, just like his mother Lucy.

  Watson and Belle were outgoing and exuberant. They excelled in agility, obedience and trailing. Both dogs contradicted much of the published information on a bloodhound’s temperament and response to training. From the beginning, they showed all of the qualities and the work ethic found in border collies and German shepherds, while their off-lead obedience and control matched most of the so-called obedience breeds. When they took their Introductory Search Dog Test, they sailed through it and passed with flying colours.

  Watson grew up to be a beautiful dog but died of bloat at the age of eighteen months. The exact cause of the bloat was not known; we do know that big dogs, like bloodhounds, are prone to twisting their gut and can’t be exercised two hours before or after a meal, and must be kept reasonably calm at all times.

  Belle was always a great trailing dog – as good as her mother Lucy. In search and rescue, both of them had proved to be as effective as air-scenting dogs, and sometimes more effective, and we wanted to breed on Lucy’s lines. When we decided to breed a litter from Belle, Sherry Robertson, the owner of Andorra Kennels, recommended we use Heather’s Where Eagles Dare as a sire for the puppies. In lieu of a stud fee, we were to send a puppy of her choice to Lyn Sherman in America.

  A dog normally carries pups for sixty-three days, give or take five days before or after that period. In the weeks leading up to the birth, we visited Southview Vets in Clonmel every few days. Sarah and Alan checked out Belle, X-rayed her, felt the movement of the pups and listened to their heartbeat. We knew well in advance that Belle was carrying a large litter, and so preparations for the birth began. As we wanted to keep the pups in the house, we opted to convert one of the box rooms into a large kennel. We covered the floor with plastic, over which we laid plywood. I made a pig bar – a ledge about five inches off the floor and surrounding the four walls – to prevent Belle from accidentally crushing the puppies against the side walls, which were also protected by plywood. The week before their due date, Áine took time off from work and stayed at home, waiting.

  Belle was spot on with her timing. The first four pups popped out in only a matter of minutes. We went into a panic at the sight of them, but soon got our act together, took note of their markings, and weighed each one. After the arrival of the first four, we had a lull of a few hours before the next one appeared. In all, Belle gave birth to twelve beautiful pups over a fourteen-hour period.

  After the initial weigh-in, we weighed each pup weekly to check up on their feeding progress. We watched them carefully, around the clock. Áine took weeks off work, and I took a week off to help for a while, but it’s something Áine loves, and she was the primary carer. We shared the night shifts, and every move the pups or Belle made had us rushing to her to make sure all was well. We relished every second of our time with them, knowing this time was going to be very short but very important.

  The hardiest pups quickly stood out from the weakest of the litter, and could be seen fighting their way through for a feeding position under Belle. After only three days, it was easy to pick out individual pups by their behaviour alone. As early as those first few days, tests can be carried out to determine if a pup will make a good working dog (Volhard’s Puppy Aptitude Testing is a good guide, and can be accessed at www.volhard.com).

  Only a week after the pups were born, poor Belle contracted mastitis, and two of the pups later died despite all our efforts to save them by hand-feeding. They had been the weakest of the litter, and at one stage Belle had rejected them both. She was left with ten pups: six males and four females. She fed five of them on one side, then the second five on the other. Five were liver and tan, and five were black and tan. Of the ten, four were blankets, which meant that the liver or black colour covered most of their bodies. As their colouring was more unusual than the rest, the blankets would be more in demand with bloodhound purists – the real bloodhound lovers – as pets, not necessarily as show or work dogs.

  To give Belle a chance to recover, we fed the pups by bottle with a milk replacement and weaned them at just over four weeks. At one stage, feeding times came round every two hours. That made for a fairly hectic lifestyle, especially as we also had other dogs, including my two certified search dogs, two six-month-old puppies in training, and, of course our three-year-old son Jack. Every morning, we stuck to a 5 a.m. start. We fed the pups, cleaned out the dog runs, put down clean bedding, looked after Jack, grabbed a quick breakfast if we had time, dropped Jack at playschool, and then I headed off to my full-time day job.

  We wanted to make sure Belle was comfortable with people coming and going. We welcomed Jack’s friends looking at the pups and picking them up. For the pups’ sake, this was important, as dogs can become attached to humans very soon after birth – as early as three days old.

  Calls came flooding in from all over Europe and America. News of the pups’ arrival had spread fast, mainly through American websites and also because the bloodhound community was very small and close-knit. People were ringing not only about the pups but also with the usual doggy problems. One search-dog handler from Spain rang to query our training methods, and asked if he could come to Ireland to train with us for a week. When I explained that our search-and-rescue work was done on a voluntary basis, he couldn’t understand why we would provide the service without pay. He tried to pin me down to give him a date for his visit, but I had to defer it as the pups had to be given priority.

  We also had a few call-outs for missing people. One night, I headed to Bantry to search for a patient who had gone missing from the local hospital. We failed to find him, and we were told by the medical staff that there was a possibility he had left the country. I arrived back home at 3 a.m. just in time for a two-hour nap before rising again to start the daily routine with the pups.

  Keeping all ten of the pups in the house for warmth and to socialise them meant making them familiar with household noises, such as the sound of our voices, the television, and the washing machine as it slowly rotated or spun at speed. Being socialised in this way would help them adjust more easily to their new homes. When I had socialised other dogs, I used to play a tape of very loud or piercing noises – such as the sound of gunshots – so as to teach them to cope with sudden or deafening noises out in the real world. Sometimes, I’d turn up the volume to almost full.

  When the bloodhound pups were only three weeks old, I put them into a cardboard box together, placed it in my car with the engine running, and left them there to feel
the vibration and hear the noise. Later, I drove them up the village for a couple of hundred yards, parked, and welcomed any passers-by to have a look at them. I believe dogs should be taken out as early as possible. Most owners keep their dogs inside during the critical period of socialisation.

  At six weeks of age, we vaccinated all the puppies. After their initial vaccinations, we began to take them out regularly, particularly to the local woods, where they were able to run free and investigate all the strange smells of wild animals, of pine needles, and of humans and their dogs when they happened to walk by. We watched them ramble along, sniff out new smells and climb over briars. They were happy in that environment. People mollycoddle their pups too much instead of taking them out in the critical period of three days to eleven weeks. Pups need to be handled carefully each day by humans. They also need to see and smell other animals, such as sheep and other farm animals. In a pup’s life, three to four days is a long time. Humans don’t see it that way – we think ahead in terms of years. But dogs change so fast. We need to stop applying human psychology to dogs.